Sufficient Energy Density

This term Energy Density is appearing with increasing frequency. The message is that non carbon alternatives, solar, wind, bio, etc cannot attain the needed prevalance to ever replace coal, petroleum and natural gas . Energy number crunchers say the energy output from green sources in relation to achievable infrastructure and sustainable cost will be insufficient at maximum realistic development of these sources.

1. 
   On August 3rd, 2010 at 9:19 pm Robert H. Pike Said:

   The problem is LFTR’s are in infancy, while Solar is already a walking toddler. Can’t you foresee the day when cars are totally solar powered? With the miniaturization and maximizing of technology making strides daily, I for one am optimistic Solar, in particular, will reach sufficient energy density to become a common energy source for transportation in a few decades. And can’t you foresee, in a few decades perhaps, but in the near future, that on top of every wire transmission tower in America – no – the world – will be a wind turbine that is in some increasingly significant way adding to the power grid? I can.

2. 
   On August 6th, 2010 at 11:12 pm Rodney M Coenen Said:

   The day I forsee is the day when much of Greenland’s icecap is in the ocean. Anders Carlson at Dept of Geoscience, Univ. Wisconsin Madison is mapping Greenlands reduced ice cover during the last interglacial. The results are grim. Today we are already committed to reach global temperatures equal to or exceeding those of last interglacial. The combined melt of the Greenland and Antarctic components is a sea rise in meters that can only mean vast relocations. This is not a concern over a spread of thousands of years. but data continues to accumulate pointing towards much more rapid global disruption.

   If zero carbon is the prudent response, solar and wind cannot get us there in time to slow melt to an adaptable rate.. The biggest obstacles are energy storage to account for intermittancy and expanding global energy demand faster than wind and solar reach production. There is no 30 year, or 50 year, strategy for achieving zero carbon. We need one, admittedly or not. A 15 year program of LFTR development followed by 15 years of LFTR construction is a light at the end of the tunnel.

3. 
   On August 12th, 2010 at 12:58 am Robert H. Pike Said:

   Well, you obviously see the glass as half empty; I see it as half full. Yes, the seas will rise. Florida and many other places will suffer rapid shoreline loss, and millions will be misplaced. You see it as the end of The tour of millionaires’ row in Ft Lauderdale; I see it as becoming a glass bottom boat tour. Let’s take these Lemons and make Lemonade, shall we?
   I just saw this interview on Charlie Rose with Eric Pooley, the writer of “Climate Wars”. see this;’ http://www.ericpooley.com/
   maybe it’ll give you a little more hope…

4. 
   On August 12th, 2010 at 8:29 pm Rodney M Coenen Said:

   I admire optimism Robert, and I think we both wish to make some of your medicinal lemonade. What are the ingredients of the global cure? Eric Poole is right about political armies conducting climate warfare but without better weapons no one can win. The arsenal of Conservation, Efficiency, Cap and Trade, Clean Coal, Solar, Wind and Bio will NOT get us to zero carbon. Adding LFTRs to green energy pursuits might get us there and this possibility is my brand of optimism.

   Are you accepting rapid sea rise and the consequent global misery as some kind of justice for millionaires? Your glass bottomed boat will be more crowded than Noah’s ark. None of us know if we can shape the future but my optimism tells me to try.

5. 
   On August 14th, 2010 at 12:10 am Robert H. Pike Said:

   Rapid sea rise is inevitable as the oil spill was. It’s obvious that it will wipe out millions of lives and billions in property damage; but this might be just what we needed; that eye opening slap in the face. Like the oil spills, it will give us that wake up call our collective consciousness needs; so despite the tragedy of it; I welcome it.

   Reading about LFTR’s in your article was a first for me; so as far as I (and most of us) know there’s little research and funding on this energy source. I intend to continue checking in on it, optimistically hoping for breakthroughs. In the meantime, you didn’t even mention PV cells or solarthermal (focusing solar heat on molten salt to heat H2O to generate electricity) as part of the “arsenal” of alternatives, which have a lot more going for it, like I said in my original post. See this article on the new hybrid car coming out soon with a Solar PV roof; http://www.newenergyworldnetwork.com/renewable-energy-news/by_technology/solar-by_technology-new-news/quantum-fuel-systems-technologies-worldwide-to-tool-solar-roof-for-the-fisker-karma-hybrid-sedan.html

6. 
   On August 14th, 2010 at 5:04 am Robert Steinhaus Said:

   

   The United States chose the LWR development path in the 1950s at the height of the cold war with the former Soviet Union for civilian nuclear power because research and development had already been done by the Navy, and it thus presented the shortest time to market of reactor concepts then under consideration. America chose the Plutonium fuel cycle, which it now uses, to meet the needs of weapons production (first priority) and power generation (secondary priority). Little emphasis was given at that time to the issues of nuclear waste. America’s current Plutonium fuel cycle was chosen because it permitted large amounts of weapons grade Plutonium to be made quickly in specialized production reactors, reactors not designed to produce electrical power but to breed weapons materials, to put warheads on top of cold war missiles. Today the situation is very different. If nuclear energy is to be used widely to replace coal, in the United States and/or the developing world, issues of waste, safety, and proliferation become paramount. Nuclear power plants being built today, or in advanced stages of planning, in the United
   States, Europe, China and other places, are just improved LWRs. They have simplified operations and added safety features, but they are still fundamentally the same type, produce copious nuclear waste, and continue to be costly. Staying with LWR Plutonium Fuel Cycle technology will restrict the growth of nuclear power and will constrain nuclear power to a role comparable to that which it plays now.
   There are two compelling alternatives to address the problem of producing increasing amounts of nuclear waste as the planet produces greater amounts of needed energy from nuclear. Both of these alternatives will be needed in the future. The first is to build reactors that keep the neutrons ‘fast’ during the fission reactions. These fast reactors can completely ‘burn’ all residual uranium and plutonium found in spent nuclear fuel. Moreover, they can burn the existing long-lived (~25,000 years) Minor Actinide nuclear waste, producing energy and a small volume of fission products wastes which decay to the safe level of the natural background in less than 400 years (approximately 83% of the radioactive fission products produced by fast reactors decay to safety in 10 years), thus largely solving the long-term nuclear waste problem [1].
   The other compelling alternative is to use thorium as the fuel in thermal or epithermal neutron spectrum reactors. Thorium can be used in ways that practically eliminate buildup of large amounts of long-lived nuclear waste. If you use Thorium fuel in appropriate Generation-4 Molten Salt Reactors you produce only one hundredth the amount of nuclear waste [2] and you do not have to sequester as much waste in a geological repository. Epithermal neutron spectrum Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs) can also burn Minor Actinide waste from current LWRs, albeit more slowly than a FAST reactor, but in an economic fashion over the course of a couple of decades could substantially and sustainably reduce the nuclear waste problem from current LWRs while the LFTR produced very little waste of its own while it operates. The smaller volume of waste produced from Thorium fuel used in LFTRs is also significantly less radio-toxic than the long lived high level waste produced by conventional LWRs.
   We could do a better job today providing for the electricity that the nation needs while retiring GHG generating coal fired power plants by transitioning to less waste generating nuclear technology based on Thorium nuclear fuel.
   [1] Vergnes, Jean and Lecarpentier, David “The AMSTER concept (actinide molten salt transmutER)” (2002)
   http://www.nea.fr/html/pt/docs/iem/madrid00/Proceedings/Paper17.pdf

   [2] Le Brun, C., “Impact of the MSBR concept technology on long-lived radio-toxicity and
   proliferation resistance”, Technical Meeting on Fissile Material Management Strategies for
   Sustainable Nuclear Energy, Vienna 2005
   http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/04/14/97/PDF/document_IAEA.pdf

7. 
   On August 14th, 2010 at 11:22 pm Robert H. Pike Said:

   OK: Thorium’s a better fuel…so how many power plants are actually using it world-wide? How many experiments are being performed with any future considerations by nations? The science sounds convincing, but the public acceptance seems a long way off. Those of you who think modified Nuclear reaction heat to run generators are barking up the wrong tree.
   Look up in the sky. The solution’s obvious. With over 1 Kw of energy per square meter per second hitting earth; we just need to figure out more ways to convert THAT energy, not nuclear.

8. 
   On August 19th, 2010 at 11:04 pm Rodney M Coenen Said:

   We seem to be where we started. To slow global warming enough to allow us to say our effort mitigated crisis, requires committment beyond the current vision. The window is said to be about 40 years. Robert Pike believes Solar is sufficient. I find too many with reasonable credentials saying Solar/Wind/Bio together cannot be sufficient in the time frame available. Robert Steinhaus is implying, as I find informed others agreeing, that LFTRs have the potential to be a significant contributor of needed Energy Density sufficient to mitigate crisis. If mitigating various crises is not the objective, why bother with any sustainable non-carbon energies? A contest of which alternative energy is “best” is a contest without a winner.